Reunification

All my private English students at the moment - the adult ones at least, since the kid students obviously weren't born yet when Germany was still divided - happen to be in their mid to late 40's and come from (the former) East Germany.

I had a lesson with one of them the day after the Day of German Unity, and we happen to be practicing conditional sentences, so I asked her to say some sentences like, "If the Wall hadn't come down, then..."

It was fascinating, as this stuff always is. First of all, she told me November 9 (when the Wall opened for the first time) was a more significant date to her than October 3 (when the two countries politically united, almost a year later). October 3 has a more negative connotation, she said, because it marks an event that wasn't actually a "Vereinigung" (merger, unification) so much as an "Anschluss" (annexation).

That sounds a bit controversial to say (especially since "Anschluss" is also the word used specifically for Hitler's 1938 annexation of Austria...) but it's also rather true. When two countries unite, they generally create a lot of newness - new flag, new anthem, maybe a new currency. East Germany, though, was simply absorbed into West Germany, which kept its official name (Federal Republic of Germany), currency, head of state, constitution... everything.

So people wanted reunification and they wanted the freedoms East Germany hadn't given them, but they didn't want it in that way - they wanted to actually have a say in the formation of their new country. My student told me there was a slogan, "Kein Anschluss unter dieser Nummer" (No "Anschluss" under this number) - "number" here in the sense of a numbered paragraph of a law, but also a rather clever pun because "Anschluss" has a number of meanings, including a telephone connection, so the sentence as a whole is familiar telephone operator talk - like we might say "The number you have dialed does not exist."

I know, it never works very well to try to translate puns, but I found that interesting and wanted to share.

Also, when I asked her to say some conditional sentences in the present tense - things like, "If the Wall were still standing, then..." she looked at me and said, You know what, I've actually never asked myself that question - I've never tried to imagine what things would be like if the East German government still existed today.

Her first reaction was, We'd probably be like North Korea.